14 DAY TRIAL // Christmas was a pretty busy period, with lots of security threats starting with malicious email messages showing Santa's wife doing striptease and ending with infected ecards attempting to deploy Trojan horses and malware on people's computers. But Christmas has passed and attackers were looking for a new reason to send millions of unsolicited messages. The key was obviously the New Year, another moment of the year when our inboxes are full of spam messages. But what's more important is that January 2nd and January 3rd may come with the biggest amount of spam messages, as the security companies predicted.
"Many people will be returning to their desks this morning after a lengthy break for Christmas and New Year to a brimming bundle of unread emails. The danger is that the holiday hangover will make them less careful about which messages they click on", said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "Anyone clicking on a mystery weblink or an unsolicited email attachment is putting their computer at risk of being taken over by hackers for the purposes for illegal ends. Everyone needs to make their New Year's resolution to take computer security more seriously in 2008."
Sophos also created a list of the most popular email subjects used by the spammers in their malicious attempts: "A brand New Year 2008", "Blasting New Year 2008", "Dance to the New 2008 Year tune", "Happy New Year 2008 to the one I love", "New Year 2008 Wishes" and "The New Year has arrived".
In case you receive a mail containing the above email subjects, you should really avoid opening it as it may be only spam and may contain malicious attachments. In addition, an antivirus solution is almost a 'must have' these days, as the New Year threats are all around your computer and can't wait to reach your valuable data.